Blue Runnings

Sometimes I do two blog posts in a day, today is going to be two days in a blog post, and only because I suspect I shall be out again tomorrow and I think three days is too much to catch up, because I would much rather be heading to bed right now!

Yesterday morning was spent panicking only slightly (ok, a lot), about an event I’m signed up for next month of a sort that I haven’t really done before – the Gelt Gladiator near Carlisle, which I’d signed P & I up for earlier in the year when I went on a mad event booking spree! We’re signed up for the 5k, and they’ve just released the course map and the obstacle breakdown – 23 very muddle obstacles over 6km instead of the original 5km – so as well as an insane number of obstacles, they’ve thrown an extra km in too! There’s some rather unpleasant things in there, like the ice plunge pool and the electric shock dash of doom, which will be horrible, but I’m actually more concerned about the large walls and clamber things. My legs are strengthening up nicely with all the running and jumping about I make them do, but upper body strength is something in which I am sorely lacking and the prospect of atttempting to heave myself up extremely muddy ramps after doing 5.5km through the cold and mud is looking extremely daunting right now.

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April is upon us! I have no idea where 2015 is going but it seems to be eluding my grasp and slipping away rather quickly! I thought with March being over I would do a quick review of last month. When I looked at my wall calendar, the one I childishly cover in star stickers whenever I exercise, it looked much less populated than February and I was sure that I was dropping workouts left, right and centre, but when I actually add it up the two months were almost exactly the same in quantity of workouts – the only thing that suffered with my late nights at work was the gym workouts.

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http://www.runengland.org/

We have had rather erratic weather all day today – blazing sun, pelting rain, blazing sun, pelting rain, blazing sun, so I spent a while trying to figure out what to wear tonight, and having got home rather later than intended from work, didn’t have a huge amount of time to do it in. I’d driven home from work in my sunglasses, and the sun was still shining when I left, so I opted for my cotton trousers as it was a bit chilly instead of my running leggings which are much thinner, a t-shirt and my thermal windproof top thingie with a headband.

The thermal windproof top and the headband were a good call, the cotton trousers were not. As I said, I left home – and arrived at the leisure centre – in the sunshine, sunglasses on, looking forward to an evening run that didn’t end in the dark. I spent 10 minutes in the leisure centre while everyone assembled, and when we left it was snowing. Sideways. We all lingered bravely under the porch roof of the entrance to the leisure centre. Of the 10 people going with the Bounders group, 2 went home here. The rest of us bravely left up the road, and when we turned down the main road, every time we crossed a street the wind would shoot the snow straight across at us. It was horrid. We turned straight into it to head down Blackhill and it was like being shot in the face with needles – everyone had their hands over their faces desperately trying to shield themselves, a few went sideways, one even gave up running and walked down backwards! Anyone in shorts or capris had very very red legs when we sheltered behind a fence halfway down with brain freeze. Brain freeze without ice-cream is no fun at all!

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My calendar is looking sadly more devoid of stars than February. I’ve been averaging three workouts in one form or another a week, compared to the four to five a week I was doing last month, which doesn’t sound too bad – but it means month to date, I’m three short. This does not however mean I have been inactive! Work has been INSANELY busy the last few weeks – which means a lot of clambering around things, pulling heavy things about, and lots and lots of stairs and ladders. You will not however find ‘working on a broken papermachine’ on any workout list anywhere!

I had a plan after Sunday’s run – I would go out with group 2 at the Run England session on Tuesday, do a run by the river with J on Thurs, another run with J on Saturday, and then the No Ego Trail Challenge on Sunday – Tuesday came and went, and I wasn’t out of work in time to go, ditto Wednesday when I’d been thinking of trying the hill training session instead of the Run England session, and then Thursday came around…I made it out of work at a reasonable hour (though still late – we’ll keep working on that one) and invaded Chateau J to go for our run.

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I’m off to the Thirsk 10 in about 10 minutes – so I’m going to rush-type this, run to the loo then dash out the door! It’s about 1.5 hours from here and I’m leaving plenty of time for roadworks, registration, traffic, pre-race loo stop, animals on the roads, getting lost…etc, etc, etc.

I’m wanting to whittle down the amount of stuff I take on runs, but for now – particularly when I’m going on my own and need to take money, phone, keys etc. out on the route with me, I use my big bum-bag and take some stuff for the car – change of clothes so I don’t drive back all sweaty and some nibbles for afterwards.

Sometimes each race feels like I’m going away for the weekend… for the smaller ones (<10k), I don’t take a drink, and I take a much smaller bumbag just for my phone and keys, and nothing at all if I’m running local – it’s so liberating! As this is a 10 mile though, and I’ve no idea how hungry, thirsty, desperate-to-bail-out I’ll be, I’m taking no chances and packing EVERYTHING, especially if the only harm is that it might come for a trip in the car and then home again.

Wish me luck!!!

http://www.thinqfitness.com

I discovered ThinQ Fitness several years ago now when I was at uni and looking to get fitter – and I loved it; Lucy Cases’ beginner series was exactly my fitness level, and I loved how quickly I felt like I was progressing – the idea is you do each workout 5 time across a week before moving onto the next session, and I was doing them twice a day for maybe 4 days before moving onto the next one, I enjoyed them that much. They’re also what got me into choreographed step, and if there’s one thing that will give you a toned bottom it’s step workouts! It was also only £5/month for unlimited access to the full video catalogue – a bargain for a student when it’s £3/session to go to the gym – that can stack up over a month!

When I started work, I also moved to a completely new area – and unlike at uni where my bedroom was huge and I had a big floor space and my computer in the room, my flat had the computer in a single bedroom full of bookcases – no floor space, and trying to plug the PC into the TV on the other side of the building was a complete pain. I’d be in the mood for a workout, and the faffing around with the cables and going backwards and forwards would get me really frustrated until I just went ‘stuff it, I don’t want to do this any more’. I even tried with a Rasperry Pi plugged straight into the TV so I wouldn’t have to fuss with cables all over the house, but it wasn’t powerful enough to load the videos clearly.

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I’ve had a bit of a slump this week – 4 days since my last exercise session. No excuses really! I was intending to do a decent length run today – something between 10 and 12km similar to last weekend in prep for my 10 mile run next Sunday. J was wanting to try to do another 10km run this afternoon, so I was intending to go out with her, but she’s too busy preparing to have a social life so I’m blaming her for my failure to go out at all today! You hear that J? It’s all your fault! I just couldn’t get up the motivation to go out, too tired and cold to face it, so I made myself do a workout at home instead, and just to really make up for not having done anything all week, I upped the weight intensity too. Read the rest of this entry »